“Go ahead, you’re doing fine.”
“Then this lawyer, posing as a man by the name of Smith, got hold of Roberta Fenn and tried to pump her. When he didn’t get anywhere, he came to us. He knew exactly what he wanted us to find out, but he wouldn’t tip his hand. He sent us to New Orleans and told us to find Roberta Fenn, knowing that finding her would be a cinch. What he really wanted was to have us start investigating her past, get all the dope he could on her, and then talk with her. He thought that she might talk to someone who was trying to close up an estate where there was some money in it for her.”
I said, “That could have been it all right.”
“And because he handed us that song and dance,” Bertha went on, “I made him a bedrock price. Oh, it was a price that had plenty of velvet, about two or three times what we’d have worked for in town, but — gosh, if I’d only known.”
“You know now.”
Bertha blinked at me and said, “That’s right, I do.”
I said, “Here’s something else that happened.”
“What?”
“I put Emory Hale in your apartment. He hadn’t been there very long when he got to rummaging around in an old desk and found some clippings dealing with this murder of Howard Chandler Craig. It seems that Craig was riding with Roberta Fenn when the so-called love bandit stepped out of the bushes and took Craig’s money and tried to take his girl. Craig wouldn’t stand for it, and got shot. At least, that’s the story the girl told.”
“Go ahead,” Bertha said. “Give me the rest of it.”
I said, “In the bottom part of the desk was a thirty-eight caliber revolver. Craig was shot with a thirty-eight caliber bullet.”
“Then Roberta Fenn was guilty of that murder. The story she told about the stick-up was all a lie.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Well, if it turns out that was the gun that committed the murder, it’s a cinch that’s right.”
I shook my head.
“Why not?”
I said, “Hale got in touch with Roberta Fenn at a time when he was posing as Archibald C. Smith who was in the insurance business in Chicago. He tried to get Roberta to talk. Either she wouldn’t talk or else she didn’t talk the words Hale wanted to hear.” “What sort of words?” Bertha asked. “That there was some collusion between her and Edna Cutler, that Edna knew of the filing of the divorce action, or anticipated a divorce action would be filed, and that papers would be served, and deliberately put Roberta Fenn in her apartment for the purpose of avoiding service.”
“So then what?” Bertha asked.
I said, “Marco Cutler got a decree of divorce. He got an interlocutory decree, he didn’t get his final. It’s due. If Edna Cutler came into court, and had that interlocutory judgment set aside on the ground that she had known nothing about the action, and that summons had not been served upon her-now there’s one other angle. If the thing was the other way around, we’re being played for suckers.”
“What do you mean?” Bertha asked.
“Suppose the whole thing is a beautiful frame-up. Suppose we’re to appear in the role of giving it authenticity and a touch of first-class respectability.”
“What do you mean?”
“Suppose Marco Cutler wanted to get a divorce. Suppose he knew that Edna Cutler would contest it. He didn’t want to get in the middle of a contested divorce action because he himself was living in a glass house, and, therefore, wasn’t able to throw stones. All right, he gets Roberta Fenn to go to New Orleans. She gets in touch with Edna Cutler. Edna is feeling pretty gloomy. Roberta skillfully plants in her mind the idea that it might be a swell stunt to disappear. Edna agrees. After the disappearance has been staged, Roberta passes the word on to Marco, and Marco gets his lawyers to file suit and send the papers to New Orleans for service. They serve Roberta as Edna Cutler. Edna actually never knows a single thing about the divorce action. They’ve wiped her off the slate without even giving her a chance.”
“Then what?” Bertha asked.
I said, “Everything lies dormant until Edna finds out about it. Then just as she’s getting ready to do something drastic, Hale comes to us on the theory that he wants us to find Roberta Fenn. We find her. Roberta is very coy. She arranges to be found at just the right time. In fact, if I hadn’t found her by a process of detective work, she’d probably have stumbled into me on the street or dropped in at Jack O’Leary’s Bar when I happened to be there.”
“Go ahead,” Bertha said. “All that stuff is so elemental there’s no use wasting time on it. Give me the real lowdown.”
I said, “The game was that we’d find Roberta. She’d get very, very friendly. She might even encourage me to make a pass at her. Then she’d ‘tell me all,’ only the ‘all’ would be that Edna Cutler certainly acted strangely about having her take her name. It would be just enough to indicate that there was a big frame-up on Edna’s part to nick her husband. Edna would get thrown out of court.”
“Pickle me for a peach!” Bertha said. “What are we going to do now, lover?”
“Absolutely nothing-not until we find out whether we’re being played for suckers, or whether the whole thing is on the up and up.”
“We’ve got to find Roberta Fenn.”
“I have.”
“Have what?”
“Found her.”
“Where is she?”
I grinned at Bertha and said, “I’ve taken care of that little thing. You can search New Orleans from now until next year at this time and you’d never find her.”
“Why?”
“I mean that I’ve hidden her, and this time I’ve made a good job of it.”
“What’s the idea of hiding her? Why not tell Hale that we’ve got her, and smoke the whole thing out into the open?”
“Then what?”
“Well, we’d — then we’d finish our contract.”
“And where would that leave Roberta Fenn?”
“To hell with Roberta Fenn. I’m thinking about us.”
“Think some more about us then.”
“What do you mean?”
I said, “We’re given a deck of marked cards. We’re supposed to put them into the game-very innocently. All right, we put them into the game, collect our stipend, and that’s all. But suppose we take the marked deck of cards, slip them into our pocket, forget to put them into the game, and a big jackpot is coming up? Then what?”
She gloated over me rapturously. “And I thought you were dumb about money matters!” For a moment I thought she was going to kiss me.
I got up and moved over toward the door.
“What do you want?” she asked.
I said, “I want you to sit in your office and not know where I am. If Hale telephones, I’ve disappeared, too.”
Bertha frowned. “I’d have to lie to him, wouldn’t I?”
“You would now,” I said. “If you hadn’t been so smart about tracing telephone calls and hunting me up, you could have told him the truth — that you didn’t know where I was.”
“What are we going to do about that?” Bertha Cool asked.
I said, “When he rings up tonight, tell him you don’t know where I am.”
“You mean you want me to lie to him?”
I smiled at her and said, “No.”
Bertha said, “What are you getting at?”
I said, “I want you to tell him the truth.”
“I don’t get you.”
I held the door open for her. “By tonight,” I told her, “you won’t know where I am.”
Chapter Eighteen